According to court documents, death row inmates Richard Moore decided to die by firing squad, not by electric chair, later this month. Richard is the first state prisoner to face this choice of execution method since the law went into effect last year.
“I believe this election forces me to choose between two unconstitutional methods of enforcement and I have no intention of giving up any challenge to electric shock or execution by holding an election, ‘ Richard said in the statement.
Richard was convicted in 2001 of armed robbery and the murder of a convenience store employee in Spartanburg County in 1999. His attorneys asked the State Supreme Court to delay Richard’s execution for the Court. The Supreme Court of the United States can decide whether his death sentence is a disproportionate punishment compared to similar crimes. However, South Carolina state judges rejected a similar appeal last week.
“The death penalty should be given to those who commit the most heinous crimes in our society, and I don’t believe Moore’s crimes have increased to that extent,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in a statement. The dispute is 14 pages long.
Many advocates also argued that Richard’s crimes did not rise to the level of heinousness seen in other death penalty cases in the state. His appeals attorneys have said that because Moore was not carrying a gun, he could not have intended to kill someone when he entered.
Richard is scheduled to be executed on April 29. He was the first person to be executed in South Carolina since Jeffrey Motts in 2011. A death row inmate strangled a fellow inmate while serving a life sentence for another murder.
